[HPforGrownups] Veterans Suffering, was Re: CHAPDISC: 34, The Forest Again.

[k12listmomma]

No: HPFGUIDX 185044

>> Potioncat:
>> I can understand the other deaths in the series, even if I don't like
>> them, but I don't think killing off Harry would have been fitting
>> ending for the series. Here's a JKR interview that explains her
>> reasoning in keeping Harry alive. You can find the rest of her
>> thoughts at the link.
>> http://harryahistory.com/2008/10/on-harrys-survival.html
>>
>> JKR: In many ways it would have been a neater ending to kill him.
> For sure, I knew that all along. felt that the books' overriding
> message was that love is the most powerful force in this world. My model
> with  Harry really was war veterans, who have seen horrors and are asked
> to go home and rebuild, and go back to ordinary life and care for a
>> family, be a father - particularly be a father - [it is] a difficult
>> job, in troubled times.
>>
>> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/185029


> Kamion's remark:
> My model with
> quote JKR: Harry really was war veterans, who have seen horrors and
> are asked to  go home and rebuild, and go back to ordinary life and
> care for a family, be a father - particularly be a father - [it is] a
> difficult.
>
> Nice Jo, when are you going to write THAT book? It could be very
> interesting to read your version of that process, that hunderds of
> fanwriters of variated plumage have touched in also so many
> variations.
> Or do you want us to believe that process has been covered by " 19
> Years later"? I don't know who she is trying to fool, but I don't buy
> it. This whole veteranpart is an intervieuw JKR beter not had let go
> public, because it is saying: " I wanted to make a painting all in
> green." while presenting a painting in red with no green at all.

Shelley now:
Kamion, I fully agree with you, for two reasons. First, we see that after 
Sirius's death, and after Cedric's death, there is no counseling or personal 
help for Harry or Cho. They suffer and struggle alone. No grief counseling, 
no help at all.  The Wizard don't seem to have a system to address when 
people are wounded spiritually and mentally and need healing. We see the 
hospital deal with all sorts of other injuries, but not the mental aspect. 
Then we are just supposed to believe that people who have suffered the 
trauma of war are just supposed to "magically adjust"- well, no, they don't, 
as evidenced by the very story she did write.

The second reason I agree with you is that I have a husband who did fight a 
war and did suffer Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. While the early days were 
full of extreme jumpiness, irrational behavior, nightmares and blackouts, 
eventually those things settled down. It nearly killed our marriage when he 
was physically abusive to me and our child during that time. I had to 
separate from him for my personal safety. With counseling, help and the 
loving commitment of those around him, my husband healed. BUT, and this is a 
huge but, my husband is still got the marks of war. Loud, sudden sounds 
STILL bug him, and it's been 20 years since the 1st Persian Gulf War when 
Iraq invaded Kuwait. He still doesn't like fireworks- the remind him of 
bombs going off over Baghdad- pretty, but killing people nevertheless.  And, 
we've never been camping, like we did before his war service. Plus, there is 
a nervous twitch is his one arm that wasn't there before he went to war. You 
are fully right that "19 years later", and "Happily ever after" do not cut 
it, they do not tell the story of Harry's rough readjustment. They do not 
tell the story of a Harry, touched by war but managing to survive anyway. I 
would have believed it if she had written something about a loud noise going 
off, and Harry startling a bit too much, and Ginny's soothing hand on his 
arm, and him taking a deep breath, saying "I'm all right, dear, I'm all 
right", indicating that truly YES, Harry had scars from the war, and would 
always have. That would be a story painted in green, but I agree, that as 
she's written it, there is no green in it at all.

And even if the first books in this series were written at a time when war 
was a long time off for the Brits, this last book was written at a time when 
soldiers (her own people) were dying in Iraq. Surely she could take a look 
at real-time veterans and than not all of their stories are "happily ever 
after"? There is real time information about the suicide rate being higher, 
that statistics bear out the divorce rate, alcohol abuse rate is higher and 
all sorts of other data about PTSS in vets, that she could have written just 
a touch of that into her epilogue? No, it's clear that she didn't need to 
research that at all, because she had this fairy tale epilogue written many 
years ago, and she wasn't going to change her fantasy Harry who flies 
through all unscathed. It's one thing that I hated about the epilogue. 
Someone should have been standing there, with kids, but with very real scars 
that they suffered in that battle of Hogwarts- a limp, a facial scar, a part 
of them missing. Because that's the real aftermath of war- not the Rowling 
fantasy of "they either die, or they live", but that people live with huge 
sacrifices that affect the rest of their lives. Harry lived with scar on his 
forehead from his first encounter, but where are his scars from the last 
one? Even if Harry didn't have one, someone in the crowd from that war 
should have- such as a burn mark on Draco from the Fiendfire in the RoR, 
something on someone that indicated that people were still living with the 
aftermath of that war in some small, but significant, tangible way.